Book 1 - Seeing by Jose Saramago

I've managed to start 2010 off right - one book down in my quest to 52 for the year. My goal will be to write about a new book every Monday so keep your fingers crossed that it works out!

Book 1: Seeing
Author: Jose Saramago
Pages: 307

Seeing is the sequel to Saramago's novel Blindness which chronicles the reactions of a country (and its government) when the citizens, one by one, start to go blind. Seeing picks up the country's narrative four years after the end of the blindness epidemic and tells the story of the country's reaction (and that of its government) when the majority of ballots turn up blank during an otherwise normal election.

Saramago, who was awarded the Nobel Price for Literature in 1998, has a very unique, interesting style of writing. He's no big fan of ending punctuation - he uses commas to delineate multiple speakers in a conversation but eschews quotations altogether and nearly completely leaves out periods, exclamations, etc. He does, however, regularly employ the comma. Commas are used in place or nearly all other punctuation marks, adding fluidity, urgency, and confusion to his style. If I'm honest, it takes awhile for me to get into this style. I find myself losing focus and daydreaming while reading which leads me to re-read big portions of the story. It's difficult to find resting places in the book as well. There are very few paragraphs created throughout the writing, with the only delineation between plot points really coming with chapter breaks.

That said, once I get into his books, I cannot stop reading. I devoured Blindness and found that Seeing was no different once I got into it. Saramago has a talent for showing both the most base, vile parts of our nature as humans but also the side of us that is vulnerable and optimistic. His books are really beautiful narratives, even if they are filled with darkness.

Click here to read Jose Saramago's own blogs: O Caderno de Saramago (Portgueuese) and El Cuadero de Saramago (Spanish)

Click here to read a review of Blindness on The Keepin' It Real Book Club

Click here to read another review of Blindness on The City of Mass Dissonance

Click here to buy Seeing or Blindness on Amazon (seriously, I would recommend reading these)